You, again, misinterpreted the conversation and now you're trying to use your mistake in a play to divert from what everyone already realizes.

Says the guy who said he would respect a statement admitting that the GOP shares some of the blame for what happened, showed that he was lying, and has desperately backpedaled from it ever since. That's just seriously pathetic.

gbaji, it's not a conservative/liberal thing right now. It's a "you're a fanatic" thing. I've said it before and I'll say it again - you need medication or something. Sometimes you're truly scary.

I'm not sure how meaningful that is when some posters here simply equate "conservative" with "fanatic". What did I do or say to make you apply the "fanatic" label?

It has nothing to do with your beliefs. It has everything to do with the fact that you can't seem to entertain any other ideas or beliefs that contradict yours. I can't point to one specific thing. This has been going on for the better part of the last couple of years. Seriously, you didn't used to be this rabid.

gbaji, it's not a conservative/liberal thing right now. It's a "you're a fanatic" thing. I've said it before and I'll say it again - you need medication or something. Sometimes you're truly scary.

I'm not sure how meaningful that is when some posters here simply equate "conservative" with "fanatic". What did I do or say to make you apply the "fanatic" label?

It has nothing to do with your beliefs.

There are a lot of liberals on this board who are far more fanatic about their ideological positions than I am about mine. I think it does have a lot to do with my beliefs. On a forum with a large liberal majority, it's just easier to join the crowd bashing those few conservatives who dare to disagree. It's always easier to be on the "winning side", and right/wrong has little to do with it. Social dynamics and all of that.

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It has everything to do with the fact that you can't seem to entertain any other ideas or beliefs that contradict yours.

If you mean "entertain" to mean "agree with", then your statement is kinda absurd right? I should be criticized for not agreeing with ideas or beliefs which contradict mine?

Assuming by "entertain" you mean "to take seriously", what do you think I'm doing right now? I entertain liberal ideas all the time. I'd argue that I examine them in far more detail than those who hold those ideas and beliefs themselves. It does not make me fanatical to disagree with something I disagree with. Fanatical would be better related to someone who holds a position but who cannot provide a logical argument why, and refuses to listen when he's presented with a logical reason in opposition.

Fanatical would be someone who claims that he would respect a given action, but when that exact action is performed, doesn't provide respect but instead embarks on a vitriolic series of ad hominem attacks. All because the person performing the action is on "the other side". Think about it.

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I can't point to one specific thing.

Of course you can't. Shouldn't that make you question the assumption you're making? You believe something to be true, but can't find a specific example to support it?

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This has been going on for the better part of the last couple of years. Seriously, you didn't used to be this rabid.

What has been going on for years is people labeling me as such. Repeating claims doesn't make them true. I'm not "this rabid" now. I'm the same as I used to be. What has changed is that over time, the longer I've continued to not back down and abandon my positions, the more I get labeled a fanatic. Again, that doesn't make it true.

We didn't used to have forum posters who would call you names because even though you did exactly what they asked of you, you failed to completely abandon your position and adopt theirs. That's what has changed. I haven't.

Of course you can't. Shouldn't that make you question the assumption you're making? You believe something to be true, but can't find a specific example to support it?

I'm not making any assumptions. I'm stating what I have observed. The specific examples? Every single post you make that has something to do with the GOP/conservatives.

Regardless of what you think of me, I'm not really that liberal. I don't get into these conversations that much because I really don't identify with one party or the other. I think they both have their good points, and I think they both are made up mostly of dumbasses.

Anyway, I'm finished with this. I should have known better than to say anything. I think the reason I brought it up in the first place is because I'd had too much wine.

I'm not making any assumptions. I'm stating what I have observed. The specific examples? Every single post you make that has something to do with the GOP/conservatives.

ITT: We explore a new definition of the word "specific".

How about the time I asked you if you saw any redeeming qualities in Obama at all and you refused to answer accusing me of trying to run some sting operation on you to use as ammunition against you later on?

It's also more than a bit unfair to argue that because members of the GOP opposed spending the money in the first place, that they should not allow any of that spending to occur in their states or districts once the decision has already been made. They do also have an obligation to their constituents. Those constituents will have to pay an equal share of the cost of those things, right? There's nothing wrong with opposing doing something entirely, but then also saying that if we're going to do it, I may as well get something out of it so my own constituents don't get screwed.

So..."this spending is totally not needed at all, but if we're gonna spend, gimme as much as I can get".

This is...what's the word?

Toaster strudel?....no....

Aerodynamic?.....no, that's not it....

Oh, yeah...HIPOCRACY.

____________________________

Allegory wrote:

Bijou your art is exceptionally creepy. It seems like their should be something menacing about it, yet no such tone is present.

I'm not making any assumptions. I'm stating what I have observed. The specific examples? Every single post you make that has something to do with the GOP/conservatives.

ITT: We explore a new definition of the word "specific".

How about the time I asked you if you saw any redeeming qualities in Obama at all and you refused to answer accusing me of trying to run some sting operation on you to use as ammunition against you later on?

Was that right after the time I based my entire argument on my ability to list off redeeming qualities in Obama?

Do you understand the difference between providing evidence to support a claim or argument you have made, and someone else demanding you provide something that's really unrelated to the subject at hand?

Was that right after the time I based my entire argument on my ability to list off redeeming qualities in Obama?

I don't follow you closely enough to remember what you had typed before, but I do remember the reason I asked was because I was tired of you relentlessly attacking him and was honestly curios as to whether you thought anything good of him. At no point in your dodging, did you ever mention the above point, so I'm going to go with an assumption of no.

This has been going on for the better part of the last couple of years. Seriously, you didn't used to be this rabid.

What has been going on for years is people labeling me as such. Repeating claims doesn't make them true. I'm not "this rabid" now. I'm the same as I used to be. What has changed is that over time, the longer I've continued to not back down and abandon my positions, the more I get labeled a fanatic.

That's not true. You used to have a much more moderate stance on immigration and reform going along with the Bush stance. You've since become as hardline as any Tea Party sign waver. You used to answer threads about evolution and Intelligent Design rationally instead of becoming an apologetist for every Six Day Creationist. This change directly reflected the GOP pushes for Intelligent Design in the classroom with you becoming more strident and less like your old self as time went on.

I once would have thought you were better than getting into Birther politics and tinfoil conspiracies. Either you've become more fanatical or else I guess I had you wring for years. Who knows.

It's also more than a bit unfair to argue that because members of the GOP opposed spending the money in the first place, that they should not allow any of that spending to occur in their states or districts once the decision has already been made. They do also have an obligation to their constituents. Those constituents will have to pay an equal share of the cost of those things, right? There's nothing wrong with opposing doing something entirely, but then also saying that if we're going to do it, I may as well get something out of it so my own constituents don't get screwed.

So..."this spending is totally not needed at all, but if we're gonna spend, gimme as much as I can get".

I love how you present that in such extreme terms: "not needed at all", and "gimme as much as I can get". The conservative position on most government spending is that the negatives in terms of tax burden outweigh the benefits gained. Not that there are *zero* benefits, but that they aren't worth the costs.

It is not an all or nothing position. It's based on a balance of cost versus benefit. If we're already being forced to pay the costs though, we're now put in a position of realizing zero benefit for X cost, or getting some benefit for that cost. It is not inconsistent nor hypocritical at all. But you have to bother to view the issue from the point of view of a conservative and not some straw man version of it.

benefits gained. Not that there are *zero* benefits, but that they aren't worth the costs.

It is not an all or nothing position. It's based on a balance of cost versus benefit. If we're already being forced to pay the costs though, we're now put in a position of realizing zero benefit for X cost, or getting some benefit for that cost. It is not inconsistent nor hypocritical at all. But you have to bother to view the issue from the point of view of a conservative and not some straw man version of it.

No...

If you think the spending is bad, you don't take it, right?

Are you brain dead? Or just brainwashed?

"Obama's spending is EVIL....but not in my district!"

____________________________

Allegory wrote:

Bijou your art is exceptionally creepy. It seems like their should be something menacing about it, yet no such tone is present.

Was that right after the time I based my entire argument on my ability to list off redeeming qualities in Obama?

I don't follow you closely enough to remember what you had typed before, but I do remember the reason I asked was because I was tired of you relentlessly attacking him and was honestly curios as to whether you thought anything good of him.

My memory of the event was that it was you attempting to change the subject from the issue at hand to a discussion of me (kinda like what you're all doing right now in fact!). You couldn't counter the arguments I was making so you attempted to dismiss them out of hand by claiming that if I couldn't say good things about Obama this meant that I was just a big partisan meanie and we could all just ignore my criticism of him. Very very logical, right? Because the fact that I don't say good things about something or someone I disagree with obviously means that the things I am saying must be false!

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At no point in your dodging, did you ever mention the above point, so I'm going to go with an assumption of no.

I don't recall my exact responses at the time, but does the lack of that specific point being made then invalidate it today?

benefits gained. Not that there are *zero* benefits, but that they aren't worth the costs.

It is not an all or nothing position. It's based on a balance of cost versus benefit. If we're already being forced to pay the costs though, we're now put in a position of realizing zero benefit for X cost, or getting some benefit for that cost. It is not inconsistent nor hypocritical at all. But you have to bother to view the issue from the point of view of a conservative and not some straw man version of it.

No...

If you think the spending is bad, you don't take it, right?

Didn't I just finish explaining that it's about cost versus benefit? It's not all or nothing. It's not that spending is "evil", but that it's (usually) not worth the cost. If I'm paying that cost anyway, I may as well get *something* for it.

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Are you brain dead? Or just brainwashed?

Sigh. Really? You can't see the possibility of other options like maybe I've carefully explained this to you, but for some reason you keep ignoring it?

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"Obama's spending is EVIL....but not in my district!"

You're just highlighting my point for me. Liberals and conservatives are not flip sides of the same coin. I've been saying this for years now. Liberals think in terms of the good that government spending will do. They justify the spending because <insert group here> will be helped by that money, usually with little or no consideration of the cost. It's why they tend to speak in absolutes when discussing government assistance (like you did above).

Conservatives think in terms of the costs versus the benefits. We oppose spending, not because we want to deny <insert group here> that help, but because we don't think it's worth the cost. Liberals are taught to believe that since they support that spending out of compassion for the people they are helping, that conservatives must be opposing it for the opposite reason (it's that absolute "all or nothing" I spoke of earlier). I hope you can see the obvious political reasons for making that assertion.

This has been going on for the better part of the last couple of years. Seriously, you didn't used to be this rabid.

What has been going on for years is people labeling me as such. Repeating claims doesn't make them true. I'm not "this rabid" now. I'm the same as I used to be. What has changed is that over time, the longer I've continued to not back down and abandon my positions, the more I get labeled a fanatic.

That's not true. You used to have a much more moderate stance on immigration and reform going along with the Bush stance.

I have never changed my position on immigration. What has happened is that many forum posters assume that since I'm a conservative I must fit their own straw man version of what conservatives are and they invent my position for me. I am still just as much opposed to simply building a border fence as I was 8 years ago. I am just as much in favor of a work visa program specifically targeted to Mexican laborers as I was 8 years ago. And guess what? I'm also just as opposed to liberal ideas like a "living wage" and just opening up the borders entirely as I was 8 years ago.

IMO liberal posters on this forum are more sensitive to anyone disagreeing with any part of any position they hold than they used to be. I tend to hold positions that are quite moderate, but because I don't fully accept the full left leaning liberal positions, I'm labeled as a rabid conservative. it's kinda funny really.

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You've since become as hardline as any Tea Party sign waver.

When? It's in your imagination. I also suspect that your own version of what the Tea Party positions are is not very close to their actual positions either. Maybe if you stopped watching and listening to liberal pundits who go out of their way to misrepresent what conservatives stand for you might have a better handle on this.

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You used to answer threads about evolution and Intelligent Design rationally instead of becoming an apologetist for every Six Day Creationist.

Lol. That's funny. Because from my perspective, what's happened is that if I fail to completely condemn anyone who believes in any form of creationism, no matter how slight, or no matter how privately, I'm equated to someone defending a strict Six Day Creationist story. You're a walking straw man repeater Joph. When have I *ever* defended that?

I've also very consistently argued against teaching creationism as science. As I have opposed any form of mandated or teacher guided prayer in schools. What's happened is that my moderate positions are no longer good enough for liberals. You honestly haven't noticed this? It's you who've gotten more radical over the years, not me.

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This change directly reflected the GOP pushes for Intelligent Design in the classroom with you becoming more strident and less like your old self as time went on.

I have never once supported teaching ID in the classroom as science. Not once. What I have done however is inserted myself into debates in which those who oppose such things also then insist that science "disproves" religion, or creationism. I've been very careful to keep my position to saying that we should stick to teaching science in science classes, but that this doesn't mean that other ideas might not be true. They just aren't science.

What's changed? More people today argue that evolutionary science disproves all creation myths. Period. Not just the Six Day bits, but every single one. That didn't happen 8-10 years ago (or not as often anyway). Fewer people saw it as an all or nothing position. Today, liberals demand that you be 100% opposed to any acceptance of religious beliefs (including creation) or there's something wrong with you. ****, I've even seen you take flack for this, and I've noticed you keep very very quiet about your own personal beliefs whenever such topics come up.

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I once would have thought you were better than getting into Birther politics and tinfoil conspiracies. Either you've become more fanatical or else I guess I had you wring for years. Who knows.

Again. All or nothing Joph. I either completely reject any argument that a presidential candidate should really provide full birth documentation when requested, or I'm labeled a "birther" and dismissed as a nutter. How many times did I repeatedly and consistently say that I believed that Obama was born in Hawaii just as he claimed, but that I also believed that the people had a right to demand that he provide full proof of this fact? Every single thread we had on the topic. Same position.

What changed? You equated anything less than full agreement with your position to the farthest and most marginalized position possible. You have adopted the "all or nothing" mentality. I have not. It's because of the rise of that (mostly on the left, although there are certainly some conservatives who have as well), that our politics have become more partisan and vitriolic. It's because of this that people on each "side" are increasingly unable and unwilling to enter into honest debate.

****. It's because of this that someone like Iddigory, even after claiming he'd respect someone willing to place some fault on his own party, utterly reversed himself when I didn't place 100% blame on my own party. My position with regards to assessing fault for the failure of congress to investigate the sub prime loan problem is f'ing middle of the road if you stop and think about it. Yet, because I failed to adopt a 100% "GOP is to blame" position, instead of granting me the promised respect, resulted in a screeching string of personal attacks, questions of my sanity, and calls for me to get professional help.

That's not me being unreasonable Joph. That's the left doing so. And it's symptomatic of what I've seen going on for about a decade now. Ever since Gore lost the election in 2000, the left has become increasingly less about principle and more about "win at all cost". And the method of choice seems to have become attacking anything that looks or smells or acts like a conservative. Everyone is either with you or against you.

So if I appear to be more "fanatically conservative" today than I did back then, may I suggest that this may be your own changed perception, and not any change in me?

I guess, in a nutshell and in an attempt to bring this somewhat back on topic: Do people really think that my position that the GOP bears some blame for failing to investigate the sub prime loan situation but that Frank bears more blame because he actively worked to opposed that investigation really that out there? I don't think so. I think it's quite reasonable, moderate, and fair to all parties. I think it accurately takes into account the decisions and actions taken by all those involved and assesses relative fault accordingly.

Dunno. It just seems like the "fanatic" is the guy who refuses to accept any blame on his side at all, while condemning the other guy, not for failing to accept any blame, but for failing to accept all of the blame. As I've posted above, I've noticed the increase in this "all or nothing" approach to political discourse. I don't know for sure where it comes from, but I've definitely noticed it. 10 years ago, you could have a nuanced middle of the road position. You could discuss the pros and cons of different aspects of an issue, and you could agree with conservatives on some things and liberals on others. And people would actually respect you for it, instead of attacking you for it. Today, it's like if you aren't 100% on someone's side, you're 100% on the other side and attacked. It doesn't matter if your position is fair, if it's right, or if it's moderate. Failing to adopt a lock step agreement gets you labeled as an extremist on the "other side" and attacked (complete with straw man versions of your positions).

It's just a bit strange to me to be labeled as a far right wing person, when I'm really very very far from it. I just don't buy BS arguments and I will question them. And I don't really care who posts them either. I don't usually even pay attention to whether someone's position is liberal or conservative. I look at whether their argument makes sense or not. If I come off as an increasingly rabid conservative, it's because from my perspective the arguments being made by liberals have become increasingly illogical over time. As I said above, it started with the nearly screaming anger about Gore, morphed into a hatred for Bush, then a hatred for everything Bush did, then a hatred for everyone who didn't opposed Bush and everything he did, and now it's become this sort of knee-jerk "anything conservatives do is bad and everything they think is wrong".

****. I don't even care if the conservative in question (like Varus) is wrong. The arguments being used should be good ones, not those knee-jerk "you're a conservative, so you're wrong... and stupid!". But increasingly, that's been almost the entire extent of debate. ****. Look at this one right here. Somehow we shifted from a discussion about who's to blame for the housing bubble collapse into half of the posters calling me a partisan hack. Why? True or not, does that change the validity of my position in this thread? Why does calling someone names make you more right? How does bringing in past threads and arguments make you more right? Those are exactly the sort of BS arguments that I'm talking about. And it's become incredibly common over time.

Well, I'm done with the diatribe. Heading out for the weekend. Maybe someone will read this, think, and then honestly evaluate their own behavior. I can hope at least.

*Shrug* If you say so. I stopped reading when you claimed to have never changed your stance on immigration. Ironically, you once said that immigration was a place where we both agreed. These days, you completely tow the party line (like the ridiculous anchor baby amendment thread). You can go as far back as you want and pull a quote from me on immigration and I'll still agree with it so I'm pretty sure it's not me who changed.

If insisting that your stance on the topic is the same is your response, I can't see much value in the rest of your claims. Once again, have a few more nails for your cross where you say it must be everyone else who has seen these things because you're just constant as the north star.

we all know liberals are well adjusted american citizens who only want what's best for society. While conservatives are evil money grubbing scum who only want to sh*t on the little man and rob the world of its resources.

It's also more than a bit unfair to argue that because members of the GOP opposed spending the money in the first place, that they should not allow any of that spending to occur in their states or districts once the decision has already been made. They do also have an obligation to their constituents.

So, their constituents voted them in to vote against spending, which they did, yet they turn around & quietly take the money/request it? I get that it's politics, but it makes them out to look like hypocrites. Instead, they should have fought to compromise & gotten their money the "right" way- but they can't compromise & get re-elected so they're sneaky about it.

No wonder Congress' approval rate is so low.

Gbaji wrote:

I have never claimed that he didn't. My argument has always been about the rate of spending increase, not that there was one. Some spending increase can be handled by the economy. Too much spending increase cannot. Bush did the former, Obama did the later. That's why we recovered after the recession in the early 2000s, but have not recovered as well from this most recent recession.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...you're lying. You've now trying to change the argument to be about the "rate" of spending increases. However, even that's mostly irrelevant, since Dubya's spending still VASTLY outweighs Obama's (Including Projected Spending should Obama go to 2017)

In 1/4th the time. Which means that he's increased spending at double the rate. Math is hard, I know!

You're also making the mistake of looking at the time line in terms of presidential terms and not gaps between/through recessions. The recession started in 2008. We should look at spending increases in response to that recession and not as some general trend. Look at the pattern of spending through the first shaded area. Now look at the spending pattern in the second. Notice anything? There is nearly no change to the overall spending pattern as we went through the first recession on that chart.

I's very different in the second though, right? That's what I'm trying to get people to see. Funny thing is that you dug up a chart that shows exactly what I'm talking about but you didn't see it.

I saw where Dubya & Obama increased spending after the 2008 recession & how now, it's started to level off. Funny how you can't see that.

Gbaji wrote:

That's the wrong question: Who increased spending at a greater rate? Answer: Obama.

Hahahaha, it's only the wrong question because you want it to be a different question, as when asked "who increased spending" everyone knows they both did. But since that's inconvenient to your worldview, you're crying, "But Obama increased spending at a higher rate!".

If you didn't do this multiple times, even in this post, it'd be cute.

Gbaji wrote:

I suppose it "could" be argued that Bush was more responsible, but it would be an incredibly weak argument consisting of imaginary things like unicorns and pixies.

Or very real things like tax cuts that cost us more than Iraq, Afghanistan, & defense spending combined. When you take that much revenue out of the tax system, it's a small wonder that there would be a deficit for Obama to inherit.

Gbaji wrote:

How do you conclude this? Let me point out that in 2007, the deficit was only $160B dollars. That deficit had been falling for 3 years straight. To say that Obama "inherited a deficit" is a gross misstatement.

How? Clinton paid off the deficit while Dubya was running one before 9/11. It is the very definition of truth to state that "Obama inherited a deficit from Dubya", & Obama has since added to it.

Gbaji wrote:

The deficits which occurred as a result of the housing bubble had nothing to do with the tax rates. It was purely because of losses as a result of the recession (and actions taken during it as well).

No, it was a combination of decreased tax revenues due to BOTH Dubya's tax cuts & lower recession related tax revenues. If you cut taxes, you cut tax revenues. If you give people free money, which Obama ALSO continued, you cut tax revenues. If there's less money being made because of a recession, there's less money to tax. Now, all of these things were done to help spur the economy (& it's debatable on whether or not they did), but they ALL contributed to an increased deficit.

Gbaji wrote:

Also, as I have pointed out repeatedly in this thread, the revenue losses in this recession, while high historically were similar to those in 2001-2003. Yet, the job market recovered quickly from that one, and hasn't from this one. What is the difference?

There was a housing market boom post 9/11 until the bubble burst in 2007. Spending increased from 2001-2011 & only started to level out in 2011, so that isn't why the job market hasn't recovered. ****, it's only been what it has been for the last 2 years, in part, due to Obama's stimulus that created some unsustainable jobs.

Gbaji wrote:

You're the one who is conveniently ignoring important facts and coming to conclusions which are completely false.

Hahahahahaha. Me, ignoring facts? Dude, your head's buried so far in the sand on these issues that you could probably see China.

Perhaps, while you're there, you could ask those nice Chinese fellows to lend us some money to pay off Dubya's portion of the deficit- only then you could you actually claim that Obama didn't inherit any of it.

____________________________

"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin

My memory of the event was that it was you attempting to change the subject from the issue at hand to a discussion of me (kinda like what you're all doing right now in fact!). You couldn't counter the arguments I was making so you attempted to dismiss them out of hand by claiming that if I couldn't say good things about Obama this meant that I was just a big partisan meanie and we could all just ignore my criticism of him. Very very logical, right?

No, not very logical. But, that was never my goal at the time, just what you perceived it to be, because you're nuts.

So, their constituents voted them in to vote against spending, which they did, yet they turn around & quietly take the money/request it?

This happened in 2009, not 2011. This was before the Tea Party showed up and fielded candidates with a mandate to cut spending/taxes. These were conservative republicans who stood on that principle prior to that movement starting.

Also, that's not an accurate version of the process. They voted against the spending. They were overruled by the Democrats. Then, their constituents applied for grants based on funding from new spending. All they did was sign off on those grants essentially saying "this grant does qualify for the funding based on the criteria of the law". That's it. There's no moral decision being made in terms of whether that funding should exist in the first place.

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I get that it's politics, but it makes them out to look like hypocrites. Instead, they should have fought to compromise & gotten their money the "right" way- but they can't compromise & get re-elected so they're sneaky about it.

It's politics to make this out to be hypocrisy too. Let's look both ways before crossing the political street, ok?

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Gbaji wrote:

I have never claimed that he didn't. My argument has always been about the rate of spending increase, not that there was one. Some spending increase can be handled by the economy. Too much spending increase cannot. Bush did the former, Obama did the later. That's why we recovered after the recession in the early 2000s, but have not recovered as well from this most recent recession.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...you're lying. You've now trying to change the argument to be about the "rate" of spending increases.

Yes. Because that's what matters. How much did you increase spending relative to what it was before you made the change? How much did that change affect the deficit and ultimately the debt? What other means would you use to measure that?

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Lol! Where the **** did you pull that out from? I particularly love how they compare 8 years of *actual* changes in spending/taxes during Bushs term (although they seem to have tacked on an extra 800 billion of stimulus from some magical pocket universe) to 1 year of Obama. But hey! They included "projections", which amazingly enough project that we wont pass another spending bill with a single dime more cost for the next 8 years! You don't really buy that, do you?

You're the one taking some partisan source's bogus chart as some kind of gospel. None of this matters. you can gussy up the numbers anyway you want to make spending look huge during Bush's term, and small during Obama's, but at the end of the day the only numbers that matter are the results. How much was actually spent, how much we actually took in as revenue, how much deficit resulted, and how much debt resulted from that. Those are the only figures which matter.

Why are you pulling out some ridiculous hacked up partisan source's chart? Why not look at the actual CBO historical data? That's what I use, because it tells us the actual numbers. And those numbers show us that absent the current high unemployment and low economic activity, the current tax rates will generate sufficient revenue. It's not a tax rate problem. It's that our spending outstripped our revenue during the recession to such a degree that we have created a second economic problem in the form of looming debt.

No amount of providing bogus charts changes that clear fact. Spending has been abnormally high since Obama took office.

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I saw where Dubya & Obama increased spending after the 2008 recession & how now, it's started to level off. Funny how you can't see that.

No, I do see that. The problem is that it has "leveled off" at a higher level relative to GDP than it was prior to the recession. Had spending increased and then dropped back down to pre-recession levels, there wouldn't be a problem. But spending increased and has stayed increased. That's a problem. We've turned a short term economic problem into a long term economic problem. And that's because of spending.

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Gbaji wrote:

That's the wrong question: Who increased spending at a greater rate? Answer: Obama.

Hahahaha, it's only the wrong question because you want it to be a different question, as when asked "who increased spending" everyone knows they both did. But since that's inconvenient to your worldview, you're crying, "But Obama increased spending at a higher rate!".

It's not inconvenient to my worldview, it's an utterly irrelevant argument. What you're doing is the equivalent of countering an argument that a fat teen is fat because he eats 2000 calories more food than the skinny teen by arguing that they both eat more than they did 5 years ago.

Let me clue you in (again!): Every single president has spent more than every single president before him (in dollars). It doesn't mean anything. What does matter is spending as a percentage of the whole economy. It also matters how suddenly you introduce changes. Obama spent too much over too short a period of time. I believe that this is why our economic isn't recovering like it should.

Why do *you* think unemployment has leveled off at around 9%?

Quote:

Or very real things like tax cuts that cost us more than Iraq, Afghanistan, & defense spending combined. When you take that much revenue out of the tax system, it's a small wonder that there would be a deficit for Obama to inherit.

Sigh. Why do you repeat the same arguments based on the same debunked assumptions without bothering to address the counters I've already posted?

First off, taxes don't "cost us" anything. They decrease the amount the government costs us. We are not the government. It's a semi-unrelated ideological point, but I'll make it anyway.

Secondly, as I have already said at least twice in this thread: There is no one to one correlation over the long term between tax rates and tax revenue. Your argument is based on the assumption that if we'd kept the rates at a higher level, that the economy would have acted exactly the same as it did with the lower rates. Revenue is the combined total of the dollar amount of each economic action times the tax rate for that action. Raising rates tends to decrease the dollar amount of action in that area. Lowering them tends to increase them.

The point being that you can't just apply the amount of tax dollars we collected in each economic area and increase them by the increase the tax rates would have applied and call it a day. It doesn't work that way. Your argument is just as flawed as insisting that a business can just double the cost of everything it sells and make double the money. I assume you know why this wont work?

That calculated "cost" of the Bush tax cuts is simply vapor-revenue. It's a math trick. Similarly, the calculated increase in revenue if we eliminated the Bush rates (on whomever), are also illusory. We wont get that money. What will happen is that economic activity will decrease in the areas where we increase tax rates. After 2-3 years, the resulting revenue will be about the same as it was before changing the rates.

It's just amazing that I keep pointing this out, no one has argued against it, yet you continue to make arguments which assume the very case which I've debunked. If you think that the Bush tax cuts actually "cost" us that much money, then you need to counter my argument in some way. You need to explain to me why, back when the top marginal rate was 70%, we collected the same relative tax revenue as we did during Bush's term when the top rate was exactly half as high. The data clearly shows that changes to tax rates (especially the top marginal rate) has basically zero correlation to changes in revenue.

If you can't counter that, then please stop trying to count tax rate change revenue like it's money in the bank. It's not.

[quote]

Gbaji wrote:

How do you conclude this? Let me point out that in 2007, the deficit was only $160B dollars. That deficit had been falling for 3 years straight. To say that Obama "inherited a deficit" is a gross misstatement.

How? Clinton paid off the deficit while Dubya was running one before 9/11. It is the very definition of truth to state that "Obama inherited a deficit from Dubya", & Obama has since added to it.[/quote]

Gah!!!! The very fact that you used the phrase "paid off the deficit" shows that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

A deficit is the yearly calculation of the difference between that years spending and that years revenue. That's it. You don't inherit a deficit. It doesn't carry over. Deficit adds to debt (which does carry over), but the deficit itself isn't "paid off", or carried over. Now, spending and revenue trends can carry over, but those things can also be changed. Here's the deal though, Obama was not handed an economy with 24-25% spending relative to GDP. He just wasn't. He didn't inherit that. He choose to increase spending from 20.7% of GDP to 25% of GDP in one year. Some of that is GDP shrinkage, but most of it is spending increase.

But if we want to talk about debt. Bush inherited a debt that was 32.5% of GDP. Over 8 years, he increased that debt to 40.3% of GDP (most of that jump in the last year because of the recession). Obama increased the debt to 53.5% in his first year, and then up to 62.1% in his second year. It will certainly be higher this year as well.

The point being that even though his spending "leveled out" in 2010 compared to 2009, it leveled out at too high a level. That's why our debt keeps going up at an unsustainable rate.

Let me also point out that prior to the recession hitting us, the debt percentage had stabilized and was actually going down. It hit a previous high of 36.9% in 2005, and then shrunk in 2006 and 2007 down to 36.2%. The point being that the spending/revenue ratios present in the Bush economy were sustainable. The spending he did via TARP in 2008 was a one time expense (and we got the money back), so we should have seen a jump in debt as we borrowed and then a return to lower deficits and shrinking debt in subsequent years.

What happened instead was that Obama was elected and the Dems took full control of congress and they went on a spending spree. The result is that right now, unless we reduce spending we will keep adding more debt to our total every single year. It will not stop. There is no balance possible. Raising taxes is the other side of the coin, but as I pointed out earlier, it's counterproductive in the long run. For every dollar of increased revenue we might gain from raising taxes, we may chase other dollars out of the economy. There's a strong point of diminishing returns with tax increases.

It was spending which clearly changed. We should change it back if we want to fix things. I'm not sure why this is so hard for some people to grasp.

[quote]

Gbaji wrote:

The deficits which occurred as a result of the housing bubble had nothing to do with the tax rates. It was purely because of losses as a result of the recession (and actions taken during it as well).

No, it was a combination of decreased tax revenues due to BOTH Dubya's tax cuts & lower recession related tax revenues.[/quote]

Sigh...

No it wasn't!!! How many times do I have to produce the exact same data to prove this wrong. In 2007, we collected revenue of 18.5% of GDP. That is an historically high revenue rate. That same year, we had only a $160B deficit, and the resulting debt% was shrinking. The Bush tax cuts had absolutely nothing to do with the lost revenues in 2009 and 2010. Zip. Zero. Nada. You need to stop repeating this false assumption.

[quote]If you cut taxes, you cut tax revenues.[/quote]

In the very very short term. Like 2 or 3 years. How many times do I have to show you the data? Revenues are not directly correlated with tax rates. I know that many liberals don't want to believe this because it's inconvenient for their positions, but it's absolutely provably true. I already listed off a whole series of period of times, the top marginal tax rates, and the resulting revenues during those time periods. There is no correlation. None.

If you cut taxes, you reduce the dollars you gain for each dollar of a given economic activity. But, since the rates are higher, people often perform more of that activity than they might have otherwise. You don't want to believe this because it was the argument made back in 2001 when the Bush tax cuts were put in place. So even though the data overwhelmingly proves that Bush was right, you don't believe it exactly because it would require admitting that Bush was right about something. Your partisanship is blinding you to the truth that is right in front of you.

[quote]If you give people free money, which Obama ALSO continued, you cut tax revenues. If there's less money being made because of a recession, there's less money to tax. Now, all of these things were done to help spur the economy (& it's debatable on whether or not they did), but they ALL contributed to an increased deficit.[/quote]

Anything which increases the difference between spending and revenue will increase the size of that years deficit. It's simple subtraction. I'm not sure what your point is here. The point being that revenue dropped 3.6% between 2007-2009, while spending increased by 5.4%. Can we agree that the total spending change was greater that the total revenue change? Again, this is simple math? And when we account for the fact that a good percentage of that revenue loss was actually "spending" in the form of Obam's BS stimulus "tax credits" (which you'll recall that conservatives opposed despite liberals insisting that since it was a tax cut they should have liked it), that comparison is skewed even more.

We spent too much money. I just don't understand how it's possible not to accept this. I'm using direct CBO data. There's no fudging, or selective accounting. I'm looking at total spending and total revenue. I'm comparing relative level over time. it's not hard math. You have to work really really really hard to figure out a way to manipulate the numbers to make it show anything other than that we spent too **** much money.

[quote]

Gbaji wrote:

Also, as I have pointed out repeatedly in this thread, the revenue losses in this recession, while high historically were similar to those in 2001-2003. Yet, the job market recovered quickly from that one, and hasn't from this one. What is the difference?

There was a housing market boom post 9/11 until the bubble burst in 2007.[/quote]

And there was a massive tech-stock/dot-com boom from the mid 80s until the bubble burst in 2001. What's your point? Are you actually going to try to argue that the false revenue from the housing market was so much greater than the false revenue generated by thousands of dot.com IPOs for companies that didn't actually produce any products at all? The houses those mortgages represent at least have real physical value. The sheer volume of money flowing around in the tech market in the late 90s over nothing but "buzz", most of which turned out to be worth nothing at all was staggering.

Yet, even though revenue impact was very similar, we managed to recover from that without any problems at all.

[quote]Spending increased from 2001-2011 & only started to level out in 2011, so that isn't why the job market hasn't recovered.[/quote]

You can't compare the spending increase between 2001 and 2007 to that from 2008 to 2010 though. You just can't. We went from 18.2% to 19.6% over 7 years. So about .2% increase per year. The year the crisis hit (2008), we jumped up to 20.7%. So a 1.1% increase in one year. Then, we jumped to 25% in 2009. That's a 4.3% increase in one year. In 2010, we actually dropped to 23.8%. But projections for 2011 show us going back up again. The point being that we've "leveled out" about 4-5% higher than we were before the crisis started.

That's not good. It's too much spending. I don't know how many different ways I can show you the same data to get you to see this.

[quote]****, it's only been what it has been for the last 2 years, in part, due to Obama's stimulus that created some unsustainable jobs.[/quote]

But there's no indication it's going to drop. That's kinda the problem. We passed a bunch of stuff supposedly to stimulate the economy, but much of it is actually long term spending, which isn't going away and will almost certainly continue to increase. We need to cut that spending "soon" before it become institutionalized and it's much more painful to do later.

Then, their constituents applied for grants based on funding from new spending. All they did was sign off on those grants essentially saying "this grant does qualify for the funding based on the criteria of the law". That's it. There's no moral decision being made in terms of whether that funding should exist in the first place.

Holy God; Goebbels would be so proud.

This isn't about a senator saying "that grant is a good idea". It's about "let's get that funding for pork belly research, even though there are no pigs in this state" funds.

Because, y'know, cousin Bob needs that money.

Really gbaji, you seem to operate in a world where families and friends never influence monetary policy.

Where were you born, Disneyland?

____________________________

Allegory wrote:

Bijou your art is exceptionally creepy. It seems like their should be something menacing about it, yet no such tone is present.

Also, that's not an accurate version of the process. They voted against the spending. They were overruled by the Democrats. Then, their constituents applied for grants based on funding from new spending. All they did was sign off on those grants essentially saying "this grant does qualify for the funding based on the criteria of the law". That's it. There's no moral decision being made in terms of whether that funding should exist in the first place.

Except the funding wouldn't exist if they "won" their vote. But since they lost the vote & the funding does exist, they no longer have to stick to their morals. Well, they have to stick to their morals publicly, but privately they can request a piece of that sweet, waistful, spending that they voted against.

Gbaji wrote:

It's politics to make this out to be hypocrisy too. Let's look both ways before crossing the political street, ok?

Yup, coast is clear. Democrats are voting for the spending & requesting it for their constituents while some Pubbies are voting against the spending but also quietly requesting it for their constituents. Ones the definition of hypocrisy, the other isn't.

Omega wrote:

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...you're lying. You've now trying to change the argument to be about the "rate" of spending increases.

Gbaji wrote:

Yes. Because that's what matters.

This is where Gbaji freely admitted to lying, for perhaps the first time ever, on teh internet. The Apocalypse is now imminent.

Quote:

Lol! Where the **** did you pull that out from? I particularly love how they compare 8 years of *actual* changes in spending/taxes during Bushs term (although they seem to have tacked on an extra 800 billion of stimulus from some magical pocket universe) to 1 year of Obama. But hey! They included "projections", which amazingly enough project that we wont pass another spending bill with a single dime more cost for the next 8 years! You don't really buy that, do you?

That graph came from the NYT, uses the CBO's own numbers, & tells you the costs of policy changes made under the two Presidents. That almost $800 million in 2008 stimulus & other changes is made up of Dubya's $152 billion 2008 economic stimulus package & "other" stuff (I don't know, nor could I find, what that other $500 billion actually is- but even without it the Legacy of Dubya's policy changes thus far remain more than Obama's (thus far) even without it).

Fact: Dubya's Policy changes under his term are costing us more than Obama's policy changes thus far.

Gbaji wrote:

You're the one taking some partisan source's bogus chart as some kind of gospel.

**** the CBO for the partisan hackery!

Gbaji wrote:

None of this matters. you can gussy up the numbers anyway you want to make spending look huge during Bush's term, and small during Obama's, but at the end of the day the only numbers that matter are the results. How much was actually spent, how much we actually took in as revenue, how much deficit resulted, and how much debt resulted from that. Those are the only figures which matter.

Agreed. Here's another chart, this time with numbers from those partisan douchebags @ the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities highlighting the cost to the Deficit of various Dubya Policies as well as Obama's stimulus (Recovery Measures on the chart)(Non-Partisan)

The chart clarifies that deficit problems would be on the path to self-correction, if the Bush cuts had lapsed as originally planned. (And what it doesn't show, is how heavily those tax cuts are skewed towards the "rich"!!!)

Take a look at where the deficit would be without the wars, tax cuts, recession, TARP, & economic recovery efforts (Answer: Almost 0).

Gbaji wrote:

Why are you pulling out some ridiculous hacked up partisan source's chart? Why not look at the actual CBO historical data? That's what I use, because it tells us the actual numbers. And those numbers show us that absent the current high unemployment and low economic activity, the current tax rates will generate sufficient revenue. It's not a tax rate problem. It's that our spending outstripped our revenue during the recession to such a degree that we have created a second economic problem in the form of looming debt.

No amount of providing bogus charts changes that clear fact. Spending has been abnormally high since Obama took office.

But...I used a chart with the CBO's numbers on the costs of policy changes under two Presidents. Unfortunately, I can't use the CBO's historical data on Obama since all of his spending related to policy changes haven't happened yet, I can only use the CBO's projections.

But Dubya's policy change numbers come from that historical data, that you use.

Spending has increased under Obama & revenue remains down because of the extension of Dubya's tax cuts. I can blame Obama for extending them, no problem, but you're too much of a partisan hack to admit that those tax cuts are even a contributing factor to our looming debt.

Which is wrong, as it's a fact that it is.

A fact, which is inarguable. You can continue attempting to say Dubya's tax cuts aren't contributing to our debt, but everytime you do: you're wrong.

Omega wrote:

I saw where Dubya & Obama increased spending after the 2008 recession & how now, it's started to level off. Funny how you can't see that.

Gbaji wrote:

No, I do see that. The problem is that it has "leveled off" at a higher level relative to GDP than it was prior to the recession. Had spending increased and then dropped back down to pre-recession levels, there wouldn't be a problem. But spending increased and has stayed increased. That's a problem. We've turned a short term economic problem into a long term economic problem. And that's because of spending.

Charts level off before they can go down. I now know you're chart retarded.

Gbaji wrote:

Your argument is based on the assumption that if we'd kept the rates at a higher level, that the economy would have acted exactly the same as it did with the lower rates.

No, my argument is & always has been that increasing taxes (revenue) while reducing spending would have been a better plan to reduce the deficit (& debt) than just cutting spending. The economy's recent "hiccup" is mostly attributed to the S&P downgrade of our countries credit rating & it is my belief that, since increasing revenue while cutting spending is a better solution than just doing one or the other, the S&P downgrade may not have happened if a compromise on the debt deal including both options was reached.

Gbaji wrote:

That calculated "cost" of the Bush tax cuts is simply vapor-revenue. It's a math trick. Similarly, the calculated increase in revenue if we eliminated the Bush rates (on whomever), are also illusory. We wont get that money. What will happen is that economic activity will decrease in the areas where we increase tax rates. After 2-3 years, the resulting revenue will be about the same as it was before changing the rates.

Here is where you started talking out of your *** some more. So, you think in 2-3 years revenue from increased taxes will reach the levels of revenue before the tax increase took effect: this implies we'll have 2-3 years of increased revenue due to raising taxes.

You do that & close some tax loopholes & those 2-3 years will increase some more, even though I believe you're wrong in your philosophy that increasing someone's taxes will make them want to earn less money.

Furthermore, your argument that if you tax people more they'll try & make less money is circular bullshit. If Dubya hadn't lowered taxes, even by your neo-conservative logic, the government would still be getting the revenue it was getting before taxes were lowered. There'd be no imaginary uber-rich guy thinking, "I should make less money this year so I pay less taxes" if taxes weren't lowered in the first place.

They were, the tax cuts/;ack of revenue contributed to the deficit, which in turn contributed to our debt. End of story.

Gbaji wrote:

If you can't counter that, then please stop trying to count tax rate change revenue like it's money in the bank. It's not.

You countered it for me, thanks!

Gbaji wrote:

Gah!!!! The very fact that you used the phrase "paid off the deficit" shows that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

You're right, Clinton didn't pay off the deficit. My bad.

Clinton eliminated the deficit & paid down some of our debt.

[quote=Gbaji]It was spending which clearly changed. We should change it back if we want to fix things. I'm not sure why this is so hard for some people to grasp. [/quote]

You're half right- it was increased spending coupled with lower tax revenues that actually changed. This is a fact.

[quote=Gbaji]We spent too much money. I just don't understand how it's possible not to accept this. I'm using direct CBO data. There's no fudging, or selective accounting. I'm looking at total spending and total revenue. I'm comparing relative level over time. it's not hard math. You have to work really really really hard to figure out a way to manipulate the numbers to make it show anything other than that we spent too **** much money. [/quote]

I agree. Dubya spent too much money & Obama is spending too much money. We've been running a deficit for 10 years & adding to our debt the whole time. We should totally cut spending & raise taxes in order to lessen our deficit & pay down our debt.

That could, ya know, actually solve this debt crisis.

Edited, Aug 30th 2011 6:35am by Omegavegeta

____________________________

"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin

Lawmakers routinely send letters in support of federal funding for projects in their constituencies; some Republican lawmakers have deliberately avoided sending requests for stimulus dollars because of their opposition to the bill.

Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who called the stimulus a "wasteful spending spree" that "misses the mark on all counts," wrote to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in October in support of a grant application from a group in his district which, he said, "intends to place 1,000 workers in green jobs." A spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan said the congressman felt it was his job to provide "the basic constituent service of lending his assistance for federal grant requests."

Republican Reps. Sue Myrick of North Carolina and Jean Schmidt of Ohio sent letters in October asking for consideration of funding requests from local organizations training workers for energy-efficiency projects.

In November, Ms. Schmidt said in a statement, "It is time to recall the stimulus funds that have not been spent before the Chinese start charging us interest." Aides to the congresswomen said they had always supported local organizations in their requests for federal funding.

You don't understand the process. Congress passes a law which creates funding for state and local programs or organizations which match some criteria. Those state and local groups then apply for the grants. It's common for them to copy those applications to their respective representatives in the house and senate, and it's common for those representatives to attach basically a letter of recommendation to the grant request.

This does not increase the total amount of money in the federal program one dollar. And it's not the member of congress who's initiating this. Also, said grant may be awarded (or not) whether or not the member of congress writes such a letter anyway.

Quote:

It's about "let's get that funding for pork belly research, even though there are no pigs in this state" funds.

Because, y'know, cousin Bob needs that money.

So you agree that we shouldn't have spent that money in the first place? Why then don't you support Republicans who oppose this? It's strange that you very clearly only have an issue with this process when it's a Republican doing it, but then pretend that it's me who's being inconsistent.

Quote:

Really gbaji, you seem to operate in a world where families and friends never influence monetary policy.

Lol! And yet you support more government spending. Strange, isn't it? You get this, you rail on about it, but when someone tries to do anything about it, you attack them for it.

Meh, everything Gbaji ever says boils down to "It's OK if a Republican does it". I doubt that will ever change.

It looks more to me like it's others arguing "It's ok as long as it's not a Republican doing it". The GOP isn't doing anything that the Dems aren't doing. The difference is that they at least attempted to prevent the funding in the first place. You guys have really really strange methods of determining blame here.

That graph came from the NYT, uses the CBO's own numbers, & tells you the costs of policy changes made under the two Presidents.

According to the NYT, of course! I'm sure they're being perfectly unbiased and whatnot.

Quote:

That almost $800 million in 2008 stimulus & other changes is made up of Dubya's $152 billion 2008 economic stimulus package & "other" stuff (I don't know, nor could I find, what that other $500 billion actually is- but even without it the Legacy of Dubya's policy changes thus far remain more than Obama's (thus far) even without it).

So you can't find it. It's not present anywhere you can see in the CBO numbers, but you'll continue to blindly believe that their figures must be accurate... because... It's the New York Times! They wouldn't write something that might just misrepresent the facts a little, would they?

Quote:

Fact: Dubya's Policy changes under his term are costing us more than Obama's policy changes thus far.

That's not a fact. Continuing to state that it is doesn't support your claim. How about you personally, on your own, go and look at actual changes in spending and come up with your own figures. The "fact" is that by far the largest spending increases during this economic crisis occurred after Obama took office. Not just a little bit, but a whole **** of a lot.

Quote:

Agreed. Here's another chart, this time with numbers from those partisan douchebags @ the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities highlighting the cost to the Deficit of various Dubya Policies as well as Obama's stimulus (Recovery Measures on the chart)(Non-Partisan)

Are you kidding? It's a liberal think tank. It's primary purpose is to manipulate budget data to help Democrats win elections. It pretends to be non-partisan because it uses data from non-partisan sources. But it manipulates that data in very deliberate and very partisan ways.

Quote:

The chart clarifies that deficit problems would be on the path to self-correction, if the Bush cuts had lapsed as originally planned.

Look at the 2011 values. Look at the parts represented by costs from the wars and the Bush tax cuts. The compare that to the costs for stimulus plus economic downturn. Which one of those two is larger? Ok. Now, let's look at what changed? The Bush tax cuts were already in effect when the recession started. Same with the ongoing costs for the wars. The changes are represented by the effect of the downturn itself *and* Obama's spending. Take away Obama's spending, and our deficit would be 1/3rd the size it is right now. And here's the tricky bit: If we had a smaller deficit, we wouldn't be going into debt so fast, there wouldn't be a crisis requiring immediate action, and there wouldn't be fears of tax increases, and the economy would be recovering.

Also, they're cherry picking past expenses. We could just as easily point to the cost of medicare, or domestic discretionary spending, or any of a whole list of other things. They've chosen to examine only the costs of two things. But those are two things that didn't change in the time period in question. So why pick them and not anything else affecting our economy?

Quote:

(And what it doesn't show, is how heavily those tax cuts are skewed towards the "rich"!!!)

Yes. That's deliberate btw. If they showed just the portion of the Bush tax cuts on "the rich", it would be a much much smaller amount. They want you to think that Bush's policies are having a huge effect on our current economic condition. But of course, the Dems don't want to actually say "we'll have to raise taxes on everyone to affect that cost savings", so they dance around it.

By all means, get the Democrats to argue that we need to eliminate the Bush tax cuts on everyone at all income levels. Let's see how that plays.

Quote:

Take a look at where the deficit would be without the wars, tax cuts, recession, TARP, & economic recovery efforts (Answer: Almost 0).

That's completely false, and it should be your first clue that their numbers are whacked. We only had a $160B deficit in 2007. That was with the Bush tax cuts and the costs of the wars. So now they're claiming that those things are somehow magically contributing around $500B in deficit?

What's happened is that costs in other areas have increased by that $500B, but they're presenting the costs of those things and saying that if we weren't spending on those, then we'd be able to afford the increased costs of those other things we left off the chart. Which is how you lie with statistics.

Pull your head out of your rear and look at what is missing from the chart.

Quote:

But...I used a chart with the CBO's numbers on the costs of policy changes under two Presidents. Unfortunately, I can't use the CBO's historical data on Obama since all of his spending related to policy changes haven't happened yet, I can only use the CBO's projections.

You can use the CBO historical data. It's what I'm using. And we can look at the first two years of spending and conclude that it's too **** high.

Quote:

Spending has increased under Obama & revenue remains down because of the extension of Dubya's tax cuts.

The fact that you buy this shows just how far into the punch bowl you are. Seriously? The tax rates were at one level for the previous 10 years. They are still at that same level now. For most of that first 10 years, we didn't have a massive deficit and debt problem. Now we do. How the **** do you justify blaming the factor that didn't change on this?

What you should be saying, if you were being honest, is that if we'd let the Bush tax cuts expire we'd be better able to afford all the spending increases we did. Which is not remotely the same as the argument you're making.

Quote:

I can blame Obama for extending them, no problem, but you're too much of a partisan hack to admit that those tax cuts are even a contributing factor to our looming debt.

It has nothing to do with partisanship (on my part). Those tax rates didn't change. The spending did change. The fact that you want to blame the factor that didn't change instead of the one that did for why we have such high deficits is the result of partisanship on your part. If we had kept the Bush tax rates exactly the same and *not* spent trillions of dollars on stimulus, we would not be in a debt crisis right now.

Quote:

A fact, which is inarguable. You can continue attempting to say Dubya's tax cuts aren't contributing to our debt, but everytime you do: you're wrong.

Repeating this over and over doesn't make it any less false this time than the last 10 times. You are wrong. Pure and simple. You are provably wrong.

Serious question time - everyone dismisses this and that news source, saying they're biased. In everyone's opinion, what are the unbiased news sources out there? Are there any?

For political stuff, I start with The Hill and Roll Call, a couple boring *** political news sources that do a good job of covering the simple facts of what's going on. This is, of course, excepting editorials and blog sections. I visit Politico and usually trust their reporting but they've gotten more worried about fluff stories than process so they're further down the list than they used to be. I'm a junkie for Political Wire which gives me leads on a bunch of stories throughout the day but that's more something to let me know what I might want to read about, not a primary source.

For news stories, I read the Chicago Tribune for local stuff and the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times and Washington Post for national news (Chicago Trib and LA Times are part of the same media group though). I'd read more WSJ but they've gone paywall and I'm not giving Murdoch & News Corp any of my cash directly. I've used al-Jazeera for keeping up with Libya and assorted stories from a different point of view. Most of their reporting is pretty standard stuff; if you're hoping for "Death to the Great Satan!", you'll be disappointed. Again, excepting blogs and editorials which can be more sensational. I'd read more BBC except that I don't seem to get around to it. Really, any major story I'm exceptionally interested in, I'll wind up reading from a couple different sources just because I'm interested in what Source A has to add that Source B missed.

Finally, for stories with a tech slant, I like to read Ars Technica. They have a considerably more sane view of things like the Wikileaks or Anonymous attacks that get hyped up in other media sources as breathless headlines of "Extreme Hacking Firewall USB Attacks Computer Facebook OMG!!!".

Serious question time - everyone dismisses this and that news source, saying they're biased. In everyone's opinion, what are the unbiased news sources out there? Are there any?

Wikipedia, of course.

____________________________

publiusvarus wrote:

we all know liberals are well adjusted american citizens who only want what's best for society. While conservatives are evil money grubbing scum who only want to sh*t on the little man and rob the world of its resources.

It's not "Republicans" I don't like; it's hypocrites and liars, regardless of the persons politics.

So attacking someone for doing the exact same thing you do isn't hypocritical? Any liberal who argues that conservatives should somehow disavow their GOP representatives for accepting stimulus money but who continues to support their Dem representatives who do the same thing is being hypocritical. Or, if you want to get pedantic with the definition, they are using unequal methods to judge the two sides.

Quote:

Most heinous are people who deliberatly lie to mislead the public.

How about "deliberately misrepresent someone else's position"? How many years have I said that for conservatives, it's about reducing tax burden? The tax burden is the same regardless of who receives the federal grant money. The damage has already been done. All those politicians are doing is trying to get something back for the cost. I don't see how that's hypocritical at all.

Quote:

Again, regardless of political "side".

And yet, you're judging the GOP and the Dems by a completely different yardstick. Forgive me if I don't buy your claim.

Serious question time - everyone dismisses this and that news source, saying they're biased. In everyone's opinion, what are the unbiased news sources out there? Are there any?

IMO, that's the wrong question to ask. Most news sources are going to be biased in terms of their opinion and "slant" on stories. Most news sources are going to be, maybe not unbiased, but at least when they write down a fact, it's an actual fact. Where we get into trouble is when so many people no longer seem to be able to tell the difference between those two.

We had a thread just a few weeks ago which highlighted this issue. To me, facts are things that are raw data of some kind, or events that provably happened. So, saying that spending increased from 19.6% of GDP in 2007 to 25% of GDP in 2009 is a statement of fact. A statement like "The reason our unemployment is still high is because of the excessive spending by the Obama administration" is an opinion (or a conclusion if you wish). Opinions/conclusions should require facts and logical argument to support them. But many people seem to treat opinions as though they are facts, believing that all they have to do is provide a source stating the opinion, and this proves that it's true.

That's not how opinions/conclusions should work. So it's not about biased and unbiased sources. It's really about whether you're trying to use someone else's statement of an opinion as proof that the opinion itself is true. That should be obviously circular, but it's shocking how often this happens.

I mostly watch/read the international coverage. I like it because most of the American news outlets have a American slant to them; i.e. tending to simplify the issues and make them relevant to an American audience (whether they have any relevance being mostly inconsequential). BBC is also nice in that you can see instances where American News outlets won't cover certain stories. I won't go as far as to say we listen to propaganda over here, but people do like to hear they are having a positive impact in the world, and we have a choice of news outlets.

I don't get that from the BBC so much. I suppose I'm not so much their target audience, so it's a different perspective at least. BBC tends to be a bit more dull and analytical, which is refreshing when one feels a little bombarded by dramatic headlines over here. They also tend to be better at linking to the full documents and studies they write articles about, which I like.

I've also been one to read English translations of other world newspapers/news outlets as well. It's interesting to see The People's Daily take on a US/China event for example. A little view into what others are hearing about the world if nothing else.

*shrugs*

I have this crazy idea if I view lots of different news outlets I'll be able to spot bias more easily. It works with mixed results I suppose.

According to the NYT, of course! I'm sure they're being perfectly unbiased and whatnot. Smiley: lol

ITT: Gbaji tells me to use the CBO's numbers, which are the numbers he uses, yet lambasts the NYT when they use "his" source.

Totally transparent partisan hypocrisy, that's what that is. In Gbaji land, the CBO's numbers only are important when they support his claims, not when they support someone else's.

Gbaji wrote:

So you can't find it. It's not present anywhere you can see in the CBO numbers, but you'll continue to blindly believe that their figures must be accurate... because... It's the New York Times! They wouldn't write something that might just misrepresent the facts a little, would they?

The point is moot. As I said in my previous post, after subtracting the $154 billion in "free" monies stimulus (Dubya's 2008 stimulus) & not knowing what that "other" $500 billion actually is: Dubya's New Policies are a whopping $3 trillion more than Obama's new policies. This is a fact, as Dubya's wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) & Tax Cut policies cost the US more than all of Obama's new policies COMBINED.

This is a fact. It does not matter if you deny this fact, like you denied in previous posts that man made carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere contributes to the greenhouse effect, as it is a fact. It is inarguable.

Now, before you try & change the argument to "what really matters", stop. My point it that Dubya's Wars increased spending & that Dubya's Tax cuts reduced revenue (taxes). Again, these are facts. Sure, they are inconvenient facts for your worldview, but they are facts none the less.

Dubya increased spending while cutting taxes which lead to a deficit. Yes, the deficit was shrinking as the post 9/11 economy improved & more tax revenue was taken in. Then it grew again due to the recession, grew more because of the 2008 "free money" Dubya stimulus, grew some more because of TARP, & continues to grow under Obama.

All facts, all true, & all politically inconvenient for you.

Gbaji wrote:

It has nothing to do with partisanship (on my part). Those tax rates didn't change. The spending did change. The fact that you want to blame the factor that didn't change instead of the one that did for why we have such high deficits is the result of partisanship on your part. If we had kept the Bush tax rates exactly the same and *not* spent trillions of dollars on stimulus, we would not be in a debt crisis right now.

No where, in any of my posts, did I place sole blame on our record deficit today on Dubya's tax cuts. It is a contributing factor; as is war spending (under both Presidents), the recession, TARP, Dubya's Stimulus, Obama's stimulus, Obama's Healthcare Law, etc.

We agreed that a deficit is the difference between revenue & spending. We know Dubya's tax cuts reduced revenues. Therefore, we know that Dubya's tax cuts are a contributing factor to the deficit & the debt crisis.

This is a fact.

Omega wrote:

A fact, which is inarguable. You can continue attempting to say Dubya's tax cuts aren't contributing to our debt, but everytime you do: you're wrong. [quote=Gbaji] Repeating this over and over doesn't make it any less false this time than the last 10 times. You are wrong. Pure and simple. You are provably wrong.

Prove me wrong, by all means. Maybe you could even find a chart?

Edited, Aug 31st 2011 1:42am by Omegavegeta

____________________________

"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin

According to the NYT, of course! I'm sure they're being perfectly unbiased and whatnot. Smiley: lol

ITT: Gbaji tells me to use the CBO's numbers, which are the numbers he uses, yet lambasts the NYT when they use "his" source.

Because the NYT is taking only part of the set of CBO numbers and pretending that they are the only factors. I didn't say that their source is inaccurate, but that they have manipulated the data. You did notice that the deficit chart only includes "costs" that contribute to the deficit, right? Where are the rest of the costs? The $1.5T deficit is only part of the $3.5T total spending.

That chart assumes that the deficit is made up exclusively of 5 things: Tarp, revenue loss due to recession, Obama's stimulus spending, Bush's tax cuts, and costs of the wars. Why? Why not look at the entirety of all the costs and revenue changes over say a decade and then look at what changed after 2007 to cause the deficit to grow so much? Wouldn't that give us a much more accurate idea of why we have such a high deficit and perhaps what we should change to undo it?

It's GIGO. They start out assuming that the Bush tax cuts and the costs of the wars are part of what's causing our deficit and thus they include those things in the list of things on their chart. If they'd decided that education was why we're in a deficit, there would be a colored band showing the cost of education. And if they'd decided that medicare was to blame, we'd see a band showing the costs of medicare.

It's BS because it only shows what the person writing the chart wants you to see. It has nothing to do with where the data originally came from. They aren't showing you *all* the data.

Quote:

In Gbaji land, the CBO's numbers only are important when they support his claims, not when they support someone else's.

Nope. I believe in looking at the full set of data, and not a cherry picked subset.

Quote:

The point is moot. As I said in my previous post, after subtracting the $154 billion in "free" monies stimulus (Dubya's 2008 stimulus) & not knowing what that "other" $500 billion actually is: Dubya's New Policies are a whopping $3 trillion more than Obama's new policies. This is a fact, as Dubya's wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) & Tax Cut policies cost the US more than all of Obama's new policies COMBINED.

Sigh. Over 8 years. And it doesn't matter. You're comparing apples to oranges. What matters here is deficit, which is a yearly calculation. Thus, we need to look at how much spending is compared to revenue in any given year. I'm not sure why you think adding up the total spending of some cherry picked thing over an arbitrary period of time provides us with any insight into this. Let's not loose sight of the fact that during most of the 8 years that Bush was president, and during the time period when most of that $3T was "spent", the deficits remained manageable, and debt as a percentage of GDP was kept in the mid 30% range. Why count money that didn't put us further in debt when it was spent? That's like blaming the cost of a car you finished paying off 5 years ago for your current debt problems. Sure, you can assume that if you hadn't spent that money on that car back then, maybe you'd have put it in the bank or invested it, or otherwise had it available to help offset your current spending, but odds are that you'd just have spent it on something else instead. And it ignores the fact that your current problems are happening because you are spending more than you are earning. No amount of savings in the past will fix that.

Quote:

This is a fact. It does not matter if you deny this fact, like you denied in previous posts that man made carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere contributes to the greenhouse effect, as it is a fact. It is inarguable.

Here you are mixing up fact and opinion/conclusion. There's a difference between saying that manmade CO2 gas contributes to the greenhouse effect (which is true) and saying that the current greenhouse gas effect from that gas is out of control and will result in runaway temperature increases unless we take draconian steps to limit CO2 emissions. One is a fact. The other is an opinion. Get it?

Similarly, saying "Bush spent $x over y years" may be a fact. But saying that it's because he spent that money back then that we're in our current economic problems is not a fact. It's a ... wait for it... opinion.

Quote:

Dubya increased spending while cutting taxes which lead to a deficit. Yes, the deficit was shrinking as the post 9/11 economy improved & more tax revenue was taken in. Then it grew again due to the recession, grew more because of the 2008 "free money" Dubya stimulus, grew some more because of TARP, & continues to grow under Obama.

There is very little of that deficit growth which can be blamed on Bush's actions though. Certainly, not on the tax cuts and costs of wars. Those were constant effects back when the deficits and debt were shrinking. They didn't change after that point, so they can't be the cause of our current problems. I just don't know how many times and in how many ways I have to explain this bit of logic for you to get it. I'm also still completely unsure where they get their figures for the 2008 stimulus. As far as I know the only stimulus passed that year was about $150B and was a one time spending. This had very little effect on the whole, and certainly cannot be blamed in any way for the increased deficits in 2009 and 2010.

Quote:

No where, in any of my posts, did I place sole blame on our record deficit today on Dubya's tax cuts. It is a contributing factor; as is war spending (under both Presidents), the recession, TARP, Dubya's Stimulus, Obama's stimulus, Obama's Healthcare Law, etc.

It's not even a contributing factor though. Not unless you want to argue that everything we "didn't do" counts as a contributing factor. We didn't double tax rates either. Can we blame the fact that we didn't do that? We didn't eliminate the social security program. That would have saved us money. Do we blame that as well?

We should only blame a changed economic outcome on changed economic actions. We did not change the tax rates. We did not change the costs of the wars. What we did change was spending in the recovery act, and in numerous other programmatic areas within our budget. Those were done by Obama and the Dems. When a result changes, you look for what you changed which might have caused that result. It just seems bizarre to me that you'd choose to blame things that were constants all along. Again, why not blame our deficit on medicare or social security? Afterall, if we weren't paying for those things, we wouldn't have a deficit either.

As I said earlier, we could arbitrarily blame our deficit on any of the $3.5T we're spending. Why arbitrarily pick a specific $1.5T and decide that's what we should blame it on? IMO, we should look at what changed to increase our spending by nearly a trillion dollars a year and focus on that. That would be the reasonable way of doing it.

Quote:

We agreed that a deficit is the difference between revenue & spending. We know Dubya's tax cuts reduced revenues. Therefore, we know that Dubya's tax cuts are a contributing factor to the deficit & the debt crisis.

This is a fact.

So is every other dollar we spend and every dollar we aren't currently taxing though. That's an irrelevant "fact". The far more relevant direction to look with regards to determining what actually caused our change in deficit is the changes we made along the way. And the big changes are the spending that the Dem did. We're looking for a cause, not just rattling off facts. At some point you have to look at your facts, apply some reason to them, and then come to a conclusion.

And the reasoning I'm using is that the tax rates didn't change, and the cost of the wars didn't change. Thus, their impact on a change in deficit is negligible. We should look at what changed in our spending and revenue to determine why the difference between then increased. I guess I just don't understand why you insist on looking elsewhere. You'd never do this in your own life, would you? You'd never notice that your car is getting worse gas mileage than it used to and assume that it's because the spare tire you've always carried around in the trunk must be weighing it down. You'd never assume that you slipped on the pavement you walk on safely every day because your shoes are broken and not because it's raining.

Yet, in this one case, you've decided to blame a changed result on factors that didn't change, instead of factors that did. I just find that an amazing example of partisan illogic.

We agreed that a deficit is the difference between revenue & spending. We know Dubya's tax cuts reduced revenues. Therefore, we know that Dubya's tax cuts are a contributing factor to the deficit & the debt crisis.

This is a fact.

Gbaji wrote:

That's an irrelevant "fact".

ITT Gbaji admits Dubya's tax cuts are a contributing factor to the deficit & debt crisis. That's all I wanted him to admit, I win, conversation over.

____________________________

"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin

#248ThiefX,
Posted:Aug 31 2011 at 9:23 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Gbaji are you really having a economic discussion with someone who thinks the solution to any economic problem is "Let's legalize marijuana so we can tax it!"

Gbaji are you really having a economic discussion with someone who thinks the solution to any economic problem is "Let's legalize marijuana so we can tax it!"

No, he isn't, as I've never thought that. It would help increase revenue, though.

Gbaji would disagree though, since he thinks the pot producers would just sell less pot so they didn't have to pay more taxes.

I preemptively agree to disagree with him on that point.

____________________________

"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin